OS X Lion

There's just thirty minutes to go until Apple's WWDC 2011 keynote begins, and SlashGear is already ready and waiting to liveblog the whole thing. Join us over at http://live.slashgear.com/ where our swish auto-update system will keep you up to speed without wearing out your refresh-finger.

Apple's WWDC 2011 opening keynote is just hours away - don't forget to join us for the SlashGear liveblog! - but that hasn't stopped the leaks, rumors and speculation. iCloud is already on the agenda, and according to a Cult of Mac source it's not just a cloud music service but a way to put your entire Time Machine backups onto a new, intelligent Time Capsule. What's currently a basic NAS will, they suggest, get an Apple A4 or A5 processor upgrade as the Airport Express is tipped to, and be able to host users' Home folders and make them available to any Mac OS X or iOS device.

WWDC 2011 kicks off tomorrow, Monday June 6, and while for developers it's the beginning of a week packed full of coding, knocking heads with Apple's engineers, and generally sharing in the iOS/OS X bonhomie, for everyone else it's another Steve Jobs keynote and the promise of some significant platform news. SlashGear will be liveblogging the opening WWDC keynote tomorrow morning, kicking off 10am PST, where Jobs is expected to cover iOS 5.0, Mac OS X Lion, and the debut of iCloud.

Apple has confirmed that Steve Jobs will lead the WWDC 2011 keynote next Monday, June 6, with OS X Lion on the agenda, along with iOS 5 and the new iCloud, described as "Apple's upcoming cloud services offering." The news confirms long-standing rumors about the developer event.

Perhaps the two biggest topics of the week, the Google Wallet announcement and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.1 Mango unveiling, brought exciting new developments for the two mobile platforms. More speculation continued on what Apple has planned for next month's WWDC, where the company is expected to unveil the new iOS 5, OS X Lion, and possibly the iCloud---iTunes cloud music service. In anticipation, Amazon's been competing even more aggressively to campaign for its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services. Continue after the cut for the roundup video and the pertinent links to everything covered in the video.

Apple is already delivering developer version of OS X Lion via the Mac App Store, but according to the latest leaks the company plans to distribute the full version through its download store too. AppleInsider's sources claim Apple intends to make the Mac App Store the "preferred method" for distributing OS X 10.7 Lion, the Mac OS update expected to arrive this summer, with a physical version only for those with connections too slow for the download or who, for whatever reason, prefer not to download.

Apple has already made installing apps on OS X more like on iOS, thanks to the Mac App Store, and now the company is apparently looking to do the same for uninstalling software. The latest OS X Lion developer build - seeded on April 29 - has a new app uninstallation process, Apple iGuide spotted, similar to what you'd find on the iPad or iPhone: call up the Launchpad, long-click on the app's icon, a cross appears in the corner, and you click that to remove it.

Last week we reported that Apple was ahead of Google in launching a cloud music service, a digital locker of sorts that would allow users to store and stream their iTunes music. Apple's momentum continues, striking at least two out of four successful deals with the record companies, and spurring rumors of a new "iCloud" branding after it was rumored that the company spent $4.5 million to acquire the domain iCloud.com. Now, it is further speculated that the iCloud will be serving up more than just music.

If you are an Apple fan, you have undoubtedly heard at this point that the focus of WWDC this year will supposedly not be hardware but the OS X Lion operating system for Macs and iOS for the iPhone and iPad. Apparently, the first version of Lion that was offered up for devs to check out had a lot of bugs in it. Apple is also said to consider this new build to be a GM1 revision.

Apple has confirmed the dates for WWDC 2011, the company's annual developer conference. As expected, WWDC this year will kick off on June 6 2011 at Moscone West in San Francisco, bringing together iOS and Mac engineers and developers.